Furniture items used for seating typically comprise an upholstered and/or cushioned support structure for supporting the user's back and bottom. In particular, sofas typically comprise a seat base, a back rest and at least one arm rest. A common aesthetic and practical design consideration is assembling the subcomponents of the sofa with minimum gaps between the subcomponents to avoid strain on the fasteners from movement of the subcomponents and the aesthetically unpleasing appearance of the gaps. Accordingly, furniture items are typically fully assembled at the factory to ensure that the individual subcomponents are properly assembled and upholstered with minimal interspatial gaps.
The inherent drawback of assembling the furniture item at the factory is that the common L-shape of the assembled seating furniture typically prevents efficient packing of the furniture items for transport. Depending on the shape and size of the furniture item, the packing of the furniture item can result in a significant amount of dead space within the shipping container or truck. In addition to increasing the cost of transportation, the dead space can allow the furniture items to shift during transport resulting in safety risks, uneven weight distributions or damage to the furniture item. Although the furniture item can be boxed for shipment, the L-shaped cross-section creates portions of the box that are unsupported and likely to collapse damaging the box and underlying furniture item. Similarly, assembled furniture items can be awkwardly shaped and difficult to navigate into the home or other structure without significant positioning and reorienting of the furniture item. The awkward maneuvering and positioning of the furniture item required to move the furniture item into the structure can result in injury to the movers and/or damage to the furniture or the structure.
An approach to addressing the drawbacks of factory assembled furniture items comprises providing individually upholstered subcomponents as a ready to assemble (“RTA”) furniture kit. The individual components can be more efficiently packed and the furniture item is able to be assembled in situ eliminating the need for navigating the furniture item through the building. However, the inherent challenge of providing RTA furniture kits is that the consumers who assemble the furniture kits are typically untrained and may not have ready access to the tools or training necessary to properly assemble the subcomponents. In addition, aligning the heavy subcomponents to install the fasteners for connecting the subcomponents can be difficult, particularly if a single individual is assembling the furniture item. If the fasteners are not properly installed the structural integrity of the furniture item could be compromised resulting in collapse and/or injury of users.
As such, there is a need for a means of providing furniture items that does not suffer from the drawbacks of factory assembled furniture and currently available RTA furniture kits. In RTA furniture, it is advantageous to minimize the number of components that need to be assembled, to have the assembly be simple, to provide the smallest possible shipping package, and the finished product be robust and sturdy.